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Human Events * May 24, 1996
For 10 Years, Federal Government Has Lied to the American People
WHO, REALLY, IS AT RISK OF ACQUIRING AIDS?
By Maggie Gallagher
So far, AIDS has killed more than 300,000 Americans. Why, after
so much time and money, are so many still dying?
One reason, according to a damning Wall Street Journal report,
is this: For 10 years, the government has been deliberately lying
to us about who is at risk of AIDS.
As early as 1987, Centers for Disease Control officials knew that
AIDS was likely to remain a disease of gay men and inner-city drug
users. Yet the same year, the nation's public health officials
embarked on a deliberate public-relations campaign to mislead the
American people into thinking that AIDS was spreading inexorably
into the mainstream.
SLEAZY CDC CAMPAIGN MISSTATES RISK OF AIDS
Remember those TV ads featuring the Baptist minister's son, who
said, "If I can get AIDS, anyone can"? Turns out he was gay.
Remember the brochures featuring a blond, middle-aged woman with
AIDS? She was an intravenous drug user.
Surveys show that, after the PR campaign was in full swing, the
percentage of Americans who thought it "likely" AIDS would become
a full scale epidemic leaped from 51% to 69%. By 1991, most agreed
that married people who had an occasional affair had a substantial
risk of getting AIDS.
In reality, the government's own research showed that the risk of
getting AIDS from one act of heterosexual intercourse was less than
the chance of getting hit by lightening. This was the conclusion
that Michael Fumento reached years ago in his book The Myth of
Heterosexual AIDS, for which he was unjustly and shamefully reviled.
Even more remarkable, these government officials now publicly defend
their deceit. "We wanted to reduce the stigma," acknowledges a CDC
official. "As long as this was seen as a gay disease,...that pushed
the disease way down the ladder of people's priorities," admitted
another.
DELIBERATELY FRIGHTENING AND DECEIVING TAXPAYERS
What astonishing bureaucratic hubris! The first and most obvious
victims of the government's lies are the 40,000 or so Americans
who this year will become HIV-positive, overwhelmingly gay men or
poor, inner-city drug users and their sexual partners. According
to one model by epidemiologist James G. Kahn, each dollar spent on
high-risk populations prevents 50 to 70 times as many new infections
as the same money spread out among low-risk groups. Yet, of the
almost $600 million the federal government spends on AIDS prevention,
probably less than 10% is spent on high-risk groups.
If Kahn's model is correct, redirecting the $540 million now wasted
on spreading the myth of heterosexual AIDS to high-risk groups - mostly
gays and inner-city drug users - could wipe out new infections entirely.
The CDC knows the truth. Yet this year, its education program, "Respect
Yourself, Protect Yourself" is once again aimed at the general population.
Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, "A current focus of the
campaign is to discourage premarital sex among heterosexuals."
The ultimate casualty of the CDCs lies will be Americans' faith in public-
health officials, heretofore generally exempt from our growing distrust
in government.
Yet public health officials, afraid they couldn't honestly generate
support, deliberately frightened and deceived American taxpayers to get
them to cough up the dough. In private life, this would be known as
fraud - not only a serious sin, but a crime. In Washington, D.C., judging
from the ease and even pride with which public health officials now confess
their wrongdoing, it's business as usual.
[end]
Source: Human Events, p.17
May 24, 1996
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